Such installations are being used more and more widely, in particular for making flexible workships, for example workshops capable of being quickly and easily adapted to different parts and to different types of processing.
An important purpose of the present invention is to provide a flexible installation which is very versatile, and is more easily adaptable to a wide variety of uses than prior known installations.
A particular purpose of the present invention is to provide such an installation in which pallets can be used either to travel with constant orientation or to travel with the orientation of the pallet changing on occasion, for example in order to present the parts they carry in a desired orientation to machines or workers for assembly or machining.
Another purpose of the present invention is to provide such an installation in which changes in the direction of pallet movement take place without shock when a pallet passes from a first path to a perpendicular path.
Another purpose of the present invention is to provide such an installation which is capable of processing relatively heavy parts without difficulty and without problems associated with driving and/or stopping each pallet, and avoiding accidents specifically due to the high mass of the parts carried by the pallets.
Another purpose of the invention is to provide an installation which is simple to construct, and therefore not very expensive, and which operates reliably.
Another purpose of the invention is to provide such an installation in which the pallets move at very high speed so as to follow one another rapidly and thus keep the various work stations supplied without significant interruption, including when the pallet paths include very many crossovers and/or simple corners and/or perpendicular changes of direction.